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DEL.ICIO.USTalk of reviving the Northern Arc is premature, says activist
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Anyone who’s taken the trouble to run a thumb down the length of H.B. 277, House Transportation Chairman Vance Smith’s bill proposing a statewide sales tax, would find Project No. 12 to be noteworthy:
A program for the negotiation and granting of a concession for the construction, improvement, and operation of a tolled roadway connection between Interstate 75 and Interstate 85 not less than 15 miles north of the northernmost point of Interstate 285.
It is, in fact, the Northern Arc, the road project that helped topple Gov. Roy Barnes in 2002, by stampeding homeowners and not a few environmentalists into the arms of the Republican party and Sonny Perdue — who promised to kill it.
One of the leaders of the Northern Arc Task Force was Jeff Anderson of Forsyth County.
Anderson looks at any talk of a revival of the project, even if certified by a state Legislature, with a high degree of skepticism. “Something may happen after Sonny’s out of office,” said Anderson, a consultant by occupation. “But the way the funding rules are these days, I don’t see it as a priority.”
Cost of the project was about $3.1 billion back in the day, a figure that’s probably doubled.
Anderson dissolved the NATF several years ago, toward the end of Perdue’s first term. “Can we get it activated again? You bet,” he said.
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